Imago Formidilosis (Fear of the Mirror)

Hey there girlfriend. Ms. over-40-and-still-got-it...Yeah, you.  When did you stop looking in  the mirror?  That snugly little sweater you're wearing  isn't that attractive with the gravitational draw on your navel.  It would be much more attractive if you planted geraniums in there.  At least we could understand why we are being forced to look at your sagging belly button.  It's like watching a big fleshy eye socket longing for it's lost eyeball.  Unless there's money in there, and the public can apply for mining permits, cover that winky-blinky up.

There was a lovely 40-ish gal on the bus yesterday.  Bouncy red hair, gorgeous full length yellow sun dress.  It fit her - once upon a time.  As she stepped out in front of me I could see the delicate roses and "pick me" written across the back of her underpants.  Take my word for it, if you have to wear a dress that's too small (you'll know this because your boobs and your second roll of pudge are the same size when you cram it all into the dress) for goodness sakes wear white underwear.  What ever happened to great old cotton big-girl undies that you can pull up to your chin?  If there was ever a time we needed grandma's panties, this is it.

Friday I was standing next to a women at the bus stop (there's something about us fat and fifty women at bus stops...I sense a theme here) that made me decide I'll never make tapioca again.  Although, to be candid, I hate tapioca and would only make it for those I love the most, I have now recanted and will leave the pudding to be pudded by someone else.  There, at my side, was a 5'2" bratwurst bursting her well barbequed skin.  She had on white stretch pants.  The dimples in her thighs peeking through the paper-thin knit looked exactly like tapioca.  I toyed with the idea that perhaps I was on candid camera (I look surreptitiously around) and this actually WAS tapioca woman sloshed together to fool and amuse.  Then she asked if I knew how long before the next #9 bus was due.  I can be fooled, but tapioca doesn't talk.

I had to grab a hand-hanger on the bus to keep from being slapped by the bat-wing arms hanging out her sleeveless shirt.   And there, amid the well tanned fudge sundae that was my new bus-riding friend, was a massive bosom that rolled out of her tank top like marshmallow creme gone wild.

Hint to all the over-40's (even the ones who were recently mistaken for chopsticks at the sushi joint): As yo approach 50, the more you cover, the better you look.  Start investing in hats.

Choose now before you know who's looking

I sit here in my office this evening wondering how we all wind up where we are.  Some happy, some not so much, others dark-eyed and deeply sad, others miserable beyond rescue.

It has been an an eventful month. One long-time employee has been put on leave, another is being reviewed, unbeknownst to them, and two more are in the hopper.  At least 2 of the four should have been given the opportunity to be employed elsewhere long ago.  No one wanted to be the executioner.  We are too pained, it seems, to be honest with people.  We cloak it in terms that indicate caring.  If we dug deeper, I'm certain the person we care about is self. We cannot be honest with another person about their short-comings lest it bring our own to the surface.  That is what is painful for us.

Staff have complained that the way management has chosen to redistribute their workload is punishing the low performers.  It was actually designed to reward the high performers.  Sadly, in doing so, there will be an opposite end to the spectrum.  Nature has simply designed the universe this way. We are not all equal.  We will never be.

They are angry, and have grieved.  They are furious that the work they could have done is not recognized.  They are only being judged on what they actually did.  They might have worked harder, they seem to indicate, had they known there was going to be a judgement at some point.  "Can't we go back" they ask.  "This is too cold, too calculating."  "We need another chance."  "We need a different formula"  It is hard on all of us.  But, the dye has been cast.

I have reflected  tonight on the familiarity of this tune.  I have heard it elsewhere.  "Life," my old Pop would say, "is a series of choices.  Choose now, before you know who's looking."  I have struggled to be obedient to that most of the time- off and on I miss a beat- but I'm trying.  I wonder if I will reach that shore, the one less distant every day, and say to the Divine Mangaer of all things, "We need a different formula.  If I'd realised you actually meant it, I'd have tried harder...I didn't have enough time...

Pop was right.  Choose now, before you know who's looking

Angels of Flesh and Blood are All Around Us

He was just three when he first told me there were angels here and I stopped and tried to savor the moment, snapping a mental picture to harbor in my mind’s eye for eternity. Then he ran off to play with his brother.
He was seven when he came again to tell me there are angels here, and I smiled as he dug through his backpack and pulled out a sad looking candy bar I had stuck in there days before, and off he ran to play with his friends.
At thirteen he told me again, voice cracking a it as he matured, “mom, there really are angels here among us,” and he pulled the new guitar from its case and went to the basement to practice playing music I could not fathom, but long endured.
He was eighteen when I helped him move into his first apartment. He and I tugged and shuffled the little bit of furnishings he’d rounded up, and as I left that day he turned and said. “Mom, there are angels here on earth”.
He was twenty-two when I found him so in need of rescue I could not believe this was my son. He came home for a brief time, and as he left he said, “I know there are angels here among us, mom.”
At thirty he was starting to find himself, and smiled at me as he did me the service of painting my house. As he pulled his tools together at the end of a long day, he said, “The angels have been good to me.”
Suddenly:
I longed for the eyes of a child,
And asked for a guided start;
Please, Father, let me trust,
Show me the angels of his heart.

Show me now Father, if you will,
Give me the eyes of a child,
Help me see you Envoys….
And then my son turned and smiled

You are praying to know my angles?
You are asking what they do?
Then you are asking the Father for a mirror…
Mama, my angel is you.

I don’t know the end of the story, but my heart says that long before we came here, and far beyond the veil, we nurtured and cared for, fostered and minded, and there we trained for what lay ahead. Whether bent, or slightly broken, frail or infirm, we are all the envoys of the Father to those along the path. My son taught me that.

Let the blackmail begin: This is the first of many. It is where children find that "Heaven can be found in a cookie" and that "It is our simple acts that make us heroes"

"When I was a kids I was always amazed at the immense talent and unfathomable beauty of my mother. She was a seamstress and a bread baker, a cookie maker and a pianist. She painted the house, made the drapes, and-odd as this may sound-saved hundreds of pounds of wool rags that she eventually traded in on a deep green wool carpet four our living room.
She was a virtuoso with a pressure canner. We had column upon column – each column 10 deep, of peaches, pears, apricots, green beans, tomatoes, and a variety of pickles. We had meals – real meals – every single night of my life. It was all made from scratch. The woman can just kick the britches off of anyone when it comes to a really wonderful heartwarming, food-old-farm-food cooking. She’s pretty sharp on the fancy stuff too.
She was the first person I ever saw with a two tone kitchen. She painted the upper kitchen cabinets a different color than the lower ones. It was absolutely the height of fashion in our little logging town. Why, you’d have thought she lived in New York City, or Eugene or something.
She had hair the color of cinnamon taffy and teeth whiter than the shirts in the Whisk detergent ads. Somehow all she ever needed to do was put on lipstick and straighten her hair, and she would walk into the room looking like a movie star. He name is Dixie. When I was very young I heard the phrase “you’re not just whistling Dixie” and I thought they were talking about someone whistling at my beautiful mother. For all I knew, there were.
I recall sitting in the classroom and feeling so sorry for the kids with mothers who were not as wonderful and beautiful as mine. We lived in a tough little logging town in western Oregon, and some of those room mothers at the grade school looked as rough as the leather boots they wore. There were a few of the mothers that worked at the Mill and wore their work clothes to the school to drop off the cookies on the week they were responsible for bringing treats. (In those days the kids got cookies once a week, with each mother taking their turn at bringing them.) Their cookies were like little nuggets the size of walnuts, and just as hard. And, to top it off, were burnt on the bottom. Worse yet, those silly kids actually ate them. “What fools,” I would think. “They don’t seem to know that a real cookie has a ton chocolate chips and wonderful little hunks of walnut in it. It’s soft in the middle and somehow it all magically melts and makes you feel like the sun is shining right inside your mouth.” I couldn’t wait for the day to come when my mother would ring her cookies.
It is a day frozen in my mind forever. I knew she wouldn’t wear slacks or trousers as they were referred to then. But I had no idea that she would come into my classroom like Betty Davis – if Betty had been playing my mother. She had on a light colored skirt, a beautiful pink blouse, dainty dark flats and nylons with the seams so straight and sharp they’d cut you if you touched them. She carried a huge box with a hand-embroidered dishtowel over it. She set the box on the table and went to fetch the classroom cookie jar. As she reached in and pulled out the first cookie my heart was pounding as if I’d run a marathon – and then I nearly wept with pride. My mother pulled out a cookie the size of a small saucer. The jaw of every kid in the classroom dropped an inch and their eyes were nearly as big as the cookie. She continued to unload her box, one cookie at a time, and in very short order it was clear that not even half the cookies were going to fit into the cookie jar. She left the box with the teacher and the dishtowel in my charge. (I’m pretty sure I lost it.) Within a very few minutes everyone in my class found out that Heaven can be found in a cookie.
That day, my mother became a divine goddess in my eyes. She intrinsically knew that I wanted desperately to be proud of her. I needed that moment of pride and sheer ecstasy at the tollhouse perfection she provided to my classmates and me. And as I grew up and eventually grew old the lesson has stayed with me – it is our simple acts that make us heroes. Our true beauty is in the weight of our effort, not the grandness of our plan."